Dem AGs take Trump-Kennedy HHS to court over cuts to COVID-era grants

More than 20 Democratic attorneys general are joining forces to take Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to court to halt spending cuts he has authorized within the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department in alignment with President Donald Trump’s goal of cutting waste and downsizing the federal government.

“I cannot overstate how reckless and illegal these cuts are,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement Tuesday.

The cuts, which were announced last week and began Tuesday, include firing some 10,000 federal health employees across its major agencies – roughly 20% of its workforce – as well as slashing billions of dollars in public health grants. 

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Those public health grants, amounting to $12 billion, were earmarked for states during the COVID-19 pandemic for testing and vaccinations. The HHS justified the cuts because the “COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a media statement last week that “HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.“

However, Mayes, alongside 23 other Democratic state attorneys general, argue the cuts will impact the health of their states. 

“By slashing these grants, the Trump administration has launched an all-out attack on Arizona’s public health system—harming the entire state, but hitting rural communities the hardest. These cuts target the very places that rely most on this critical funding,” Mayes said. “Eliminating it would devastate our already precarious system and cost jobs across Arizona, from doctors to tribal health workers. I will fight this every step of the way.”

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The lawsuit, filed in Rhode Island, claims the “unlawful withholding of funds has already caused substantial confusion and will result in immediate and devastating harm” to the residents of 23 states and the District of Columbia.

Attorneys general from Rhode Island, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., are listed as plaintiffs.

The department has been preparing to make major cuts in recent weeks across its health agencies, especially pertaining to administrative costs and DEI-related spending.

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On Tuesday, federal health employees began receiving notices of termination. The Associated Press also reported there were lines wrapped around the HHS building of employees trying to find out whether they still had a job.

According to the HHS, the layoffs “will save taxpayers $1.8 billion per year” and “streamline” functions of the department while ensuring that essential services like Medicare and Medicaid continue without disruption.

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” the HHS secretary said in a statement. “This Department will do more – a lot more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”